The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 13

by Gardner Dozois

  “He’s been assigned to Marine Transport, as a matter of fact,” she told me, smiling involuntarily. “We are to meet on the Thunderer afterwards. I am so pleased! He’s been in the Bering Sea for two years, and I’ve missed him dreadfully.”

  “Ah,” I said. “How pleasant, then, to have something to look forward to in the midst of all this . . .”

  She nodded quickly, understanding. I cleared my throat and continued:

  “What may I do for you, Nan?”

  She averted her gaze from dismayed contemplation of the stale oyster loaf and smiled. “I was told you might be able to assist me in requisitioning additional transport for my mission.”

  “I shall certainly attempt it.” I stroked my beard. “Your present arrangements are unsuitable?”

  “Inadequate, rather. You may recall that I’m in charge of Presalvage at the Hopkins Gallery. It seems our original estimates of what we can rescue there were too modest. At present I have five vans arranged for to evacuate the Gallery contents, but really we need more. Would it be possible to requisition a sixth? My own case officer was unable to assist me, but felt you might have greater success.”

  This was a challenge. Company resources were strained to the utmost on this operation, which was one of the largest on record. Every operative in the United States had been pressed into service, and many of the European and Asian personnel. A handsome allotment had been made for transport units, but needs were swiftly exceeding expectations.

  “Of course I should like to help you,” I replied cautiously, “if at all possible. You are aware, however, that horsedrawn transport utilization is impossible, due to the subsonic disturbances preceding the earthquake – and motor transports are, unfortunately, in great demand –”

  A brewer’s wagon rumbled down the street outside, rattling my windows. We both leaped to our feet, casting involuntary glances at the ceiling; then sat down in silent embarrassment. Mme. D’Araignee gave a little cough. “I’m so sorry – My nerves are simply –”

  “Not at all, not at all, I assure you – one can’t help flinching –”

  “Quite. In any case, Victor, I understand the logistical difficulties involved; but even a handcart would greatly ease our difficulties. So many lovely and unexpected things have been discovered in this collection, that it really would be too awful to lose them to the fire.”

  “Oh, certainly.” I got up and strode to the windows, giving in to the urge to look out and assure myself that the buildings hadn’t begun to sway yet. Solid and seemingly as eternal as the pyramids they stood there, for the moment. I turned back to Mme. D’Araignee as a thought occurred to me. “Tell me, do you know how to operate an automobile?”

  “But of course!” Her face lit up.

  “It may be possible to obtain something in that line. Depend upon it, Madame, you will have your sixth transport. I shall see to it personally.”

  “I knew I could rely on you.” She rose, all smiles. We took our leave of one another with a courtesy that belied our disquiet. I saw her out and returned to my credenza keyboard.

  QUERY, I input, RE: REQUISITION ADDTNL TRANSPORT MOTOR VAN OR AUTO? PRIORITY RE: HOPKINS INST.

  HOPKINS PROJECT NOT YOUR CASE, came the green and flashing reply.

  NECESSARY, I input: NEW DISCV OVRRIDE SECTION AUTH. PLEASE FORWARD REQUEST PRIORITY.

  WILL FORWARD.

  That was all. So much for my chivalrous impulse, I thought, and watched as the transmission screen winked out and returned me to my status report on the Nob Hill Presalvage work. I resumed my entry of the Gilded Age loot tagged for preservation.

  When I had transmitted it, I stood and paced the room uneasily. How long had I been hiding in here? What I wanted was a meal and a good stretch of the legs, I told myself sternly. Fresh air, in so far as that was available in any city at the beginning of this twentieth century. I scanned the oyster loaf and found it already pulsing with bacteria. Pity. After disposing of it in the dustbin I put on my coat and hat, took my stick and went out to tread the length of Bush Street with as bold a step as I could muster.

  It was nonsense, really, to be frightened. I’d be out of the city well before the first shock. I’d be safe on air transport bound for London before the first flames rose. London, the other City. I could settle into a chair at my club and read a copy of Punch that wasn’t a month old, secure in the knowledge that the oak beams above my head were fixed and immovable as they had been since the days when I’d worn a powdered wig, as they would be until German shells came raining down decades from now . . .

  Shivering, I dismissed thoughts of the Blitz. Plenty of life to think about, surely! Here were bills posted to catch my eye: I might go out to the Pavilion at Woodward’s to watch the boxing exhibition – Jack Joyce and Bob Ward featured. There was delectable vaudeville at the Orpheum, I was assured, and gaiety girls out at the Chutes, to say nothing of a spectacular sideshow re-creation of the Johnstown Flood . . . perhaps not in the best of taste, under the present circumstances.

  I might imbibe Gold Seal Champagne to lighten my spirits, though I didn’t think I would; Veuve Cliquot was good enough for me. Ah, but what about a bottle of Chianti, I thought, arrested by the bill of fare posted in the window of a corner restaurant. Splendid culinary fragrances wafted from within. Would I have grilled veal chops here? Would I go along Bush to the Poodle Dog for Chicken Chaud-Froid Blanc? Would I venture to Grant in search of yellow silk banners for duck roasted in some tiny Celestial kitchen? Then again, I knew of a Swiss place where the cook was a Hungarian, and prepared a light and crisply fried Wienerschnitzel to compare with any I’d had or I might just step into a saloon and order another oyster loaf to take home . . . .

  No, I decided, veal chops would suit me nicely. I cast a worried eye up at the building – pity this structure wasn’t steel-framed – and proceeded inside.

  It was one of those dark, robust places within, floor thickly strewn with fresh sawdust not yet kicked into little heaps. I took my table as any good operative does, back to the wall and a clear path to the nearest exit. Service was poor, as apparently their principal waiter was late today, but the wine was excellent. I found it bright on the palate, just what I’d wanted, and the chops when they came were redolent of herbs and fresh olive oil. What a consolation Appetite can be.

  Yes, Life, that was the thing to distract one from unwise thoughts. Savour the wine, I told myself, observe the parade of colourful humanity, breathe in the fragrance of the joss sticks and the seafood and the gardens of the wealthy, listen to the smart modern city with its whirring steel parts at the service of its diverse inhabitants. The moment is all, surely.

  I dined in some isolation, for the luncheon crowd had not yet emerged from the nearby offices and my host remained in the kitchen, arguing with the cook over the missing waiter’s character and probable ancestry. Even as I amused myself by listening, however, I felt a disturbance approaching the door. No temblor yet, thank Heaven, but a tempest of emotions. I caught the horrifying mental images before ever I heard the stifled weeping. In another moment he had burst through the door, a young male mortal with a prodigious black moustache, quite nattily dressed but with his thick hair in wild disarray. As soon as he was past the threshold his sobs burst out unrestrained, at a volume that would have done credit to Caruso.

  This brought his employer out of the back at once, blurting out the first phrases of furious denunciation. The missing waiter (for so he was) staggered forward and thrust out that day’s Chronicle. The headlines, fully an inch tall, checked the torrent of abuse: MANY LOSE THEIR LIVES IN GREAT ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS.

  The proprietor of the restaurant, struck dumb, went an ugly ashen colour. He put the fingertips of one hand in his mouth and bit down hard. In a broken voice, the waiter described the horrors: Roof collapsed in church in his own village. His own family might even now lie dead, buried in ash. The proprietor snatched the paper and cast a frantic eye over the columns of print. He sank to his knees in the
sawdust, sobbing. Evidently he had family in Naples, too.

  I stared at my plate. I saw grey and rubbery meat, congealing grease, seared bone with the marrow turned black. In the midst of life we are in death, but it doesn’t do to reflect upon it while dining.

  “You must, please, excuse us, sir,” the proprietor said to me, struggling to his feet. “There has been a terrible tragedy.” He set the Chronicle beside my plate so I could see the blurred rotogravure picture of King Victor Emmanuel. Report That Total Number of Dead May Reach Seven Hundred, I read. Towns Buried Under Ashes and Many Caught in Ruined Buildings. MANY BUILDINGS CRUSHED BY ASHES. Of course, I had known about the coming tragedy; but it was on the other side of the world, the business of other Company operatives, and I envied them that their work was completed now.

  “I am so very sorry, sir,” I managed to say, looking up at my host. He thought my pallor was occasioned by sympathy: he could not know I was seeing his mortal face like an apparition of the days to come, and it was grey and charring, for he lay dead in the burning ruins of a boarding house in the Mission District. Horror, yes, impossible not to feel horror, but one cannot empathize with them. One must not.

  They went into the kitchen to tell the cook and I heard weeping break out afresh. Carefully I took up the newspaper and perused it. Perhaps there was something here that might divert me from the unpleasantness of the moment? Embezzlement. A crazed admirer stalking an actress. Charlatan evangelists. Grisly murder committed by two boys. Deadly explosion. Crazed derelict stalking a bank president. Los Angeles school principals demanding academic standards lowered.

  I dropped the paper, and, leaving five dollars on the table, I fled that place.

  I walked briskly, not looking into the faces of the mortals I passed. I rode the cable car, edging away from the mortal passengers. I nearly ran through the green expanse of Golden Gate Park, dodging around the mortal idlers, the lovers, the nurses wheeling infants in perambulators, until at last I stood on the shore of the sea. Tempting to turn to look at the fairy castles perched on its cliffs; tempting to turn to look at the carnival of fun along its grey sand margin, but the human comedy was the last thing I wanted just then. I needed, rather, the chill and level grace of the steel-coloured horizon, sun-glistering, wide-expanding. The cold salt wind buffeted me, filled my grateful lungs. Ah, the immortal ocean.

  Consider the instructive metaphor: Every conceivable terror dwells in her depths; she receives all wreckage, refuse, corruption of every kind, she pulls down into her depths human calamity indescribable: but none of this is any consideration to the sea. Let the screaming mortal passengers fight for room in the lifeboats, as the wreck belches flame and settles below the extinguishing wave; next morning she’ll still be beautiful and serene, her combers no less white, her distances as blue, her seabirds no less graceful as they wheel in the pure air. What perfection, to be so heartless. An inspiration to any lesser immortal.

  As I stood so communing with the elements, a mortal man came wading out of the surf. I judged him two hundred pounds of athletic stockbroker, muscles bulging under sagging wet wool, braving the icy water as an act of self-disciplinary sport. He stood for a moment on one leg, examining the sole of his other foot. There was something gladiatorial in his pose. He looked up and saw me.

  “A bracing day, sir,” he shouted.

  “Quite bracing.” I nodded and smiled. I could feel the frost patterns of my returning composure.

  And so I boarded another streetcar and rode back into the mortal warren, and found my way by certain streets to the Barbary Coast. Not a place a gentleman cares to admit to visiting, especially when he’s known the gilded beauties of old Byzantium or Regency-era wenches; the raddled pleasures available on Pacific Street suffered by comparison. But Appetite is Appetite, after all, and there is nothing like it to take one’s mind off unpleasant thoughts.

  “Your costume.” The attendant pushed a pasteboard carton across the counter to me. “Personal effects and field equipment. Linen, trousers, suspenders, boots, shirt, vest, coat and hat.” He frowned. “Phew! These should have been laundered. Would you care to be fitted with an alternate set?”

  “That’s all right.” I took the offending rags. “The sweat goes with the role, I’m afraid. Irish labourer.”

  “Ah.” He took a step backwards. “Well, break a leg.”

  “Thank you.”

  Fifteen minutes later I emerged from a dressing room the very picture of an immigrant yahoo, uncomfortably conscious of my clammy and odiferous clothing. I sidled into the canteen, hoping there wouldn’t be a crowd in the line for coffee. There wasn’t, at that: most of the diners were clustered around one operative over in a corner, so I stood alone watching the Food Service technician fill my thick china mug from a dented steel coffee urn. The fragrant steam was a welcome distraction from my own fragrancy. I found a solitary table and warmed my hands on my dark brew there in peace, until an operative broke loose from the group and approached me.

  “Say, Victor!”

  I knew him slightly, an American operative so young one could scan him and still discern the scar tissue from his Augmentations. He was one of my Presalvagers.

  “Good morning, Averill.”

  “Say, you really ought to listen to that fellow over there. He’s got some swell stories.” He paused only long enough to have his cup refilled, then came and pulled out a chair across from me. “Know who he is? He’s the Guy Who Follows Caruso Around!”

  “Is he?”

  “Sure is. Music Specialist Grade One! That boy’s wired for sound. He’s caught every performance Caruso’s ever given, even the church stuff when he was a kid. Going to get him in Carmen the night before You-Know-What, going to record the whole performance. He’s just come back from planting receivers in the footlights! Say, have you gotten tickets yet?”

  “No, I haven’t. I’m not interested, actually.”

  “Not interested?” he exclaimed. “Why aren’t you – how can’t you be interested? It’s Caruso, for God’s sake!”

  “I’m perfectly aware of that, Averill, but I’ve got a prior engagement. And, personally, I’ve always thought de Reszke was much the better tenor.”

  “De Reszke?” He scanned his records to place the name and, while doing so, absently took a great gulp of coffee. A second later he clutched his ear and gasped. “Christ Almighty!”

  “Steady, man.” I suppressed a smile. “You don’t want to gulp beverages over 60 degrees Celsius, you know. There’s some very complex circuitry placed near the Eustachian tube that gets unpleasantly hot if you do.”

  “Ow, ow, ow!” He sucked in air, staring at me with the astonishment of the very new operative. It always takes them a while to discover that immortality and intense pain are not strangers, indeed can reside in the same eternal house for quite lengthy periods of time. “Should I drink some ice water?”

  “By no means, unless you want some real discomfort. You’ll be all right in a minute or so. As I was about to say, I have some recordings of Jean de Reszke I’ll transmit to you, if you’re interested in comparing artists.”

  “Thanks, I’d like that.” Averill ran a hasty self-diagnostic.

  “And how is your team faring over at the New Brunswick, by the way? No cases of nerves, no blue devils?”

  “Hell no.” Averill started to lift his coffee again and then set it down respectfully.

  “Doesn’t bother you that the whole place will be ashes in a few days’ time, and most of your neighbours dead?”

  “No. We’re all okay over there. We figure it’s just a metaphor for the whole business, isn’t it? I mean, sooner or later this whole world” – he made a sweeping gesture, palm outward – “as we know it, is going the same way, right? So what’s it matter if it’s the earthquake finishes it now or a wrecking ball some place further on in time, right? Same thing with the people. It’ll all come to the same thing in the end, so there’s no reason to get personally upset about it, is there? No, sir. S
pecially since we’ll all still be alive.”

  “A commendable attitude.” I had a sip of my coffee. “And your work goes well?”

  “Yes sir.” He grinned. “You will be so proud of us burglary squad fellows when you get our next list. You wouldn’t believe the stuff we’re finding! All kinds of objets d’art, looks like. One-of-a-kind items, by God. Wait’ll you see.”

  “I look forward to it.” I glanced at my Chronometer and drank down the rest of my coffee, having waited for it to descend to a comfortable 59 degrees Celsius. “But, you know, Averill, it really won’t do to think of yourselves as burglars.”

  “Well – that is – it’s only a figure of speech, anyhow!” Averill protested, flushing. “A joke!”

  “I’m aware of that, but I cannot emphasize enough that we are not stealing anything.” I set my coffee cup down, aware that I sounded priggish, and looked sternly at him. “We’re preserving priceless examples of late Victorian craftsmanship for the edification of future generations.”

  “I know.” Averill looked at me sheepishly. “But – aw, hell, do you mean to say not one of those crystal chandeliers will wind up in some Facilitator General’s private HQ somewhere?”

  “That’s an absurd idea,” I told him, though I knew only too well it wasn’t. Still, it doesn’t do to disillusion one’s subordinates too young. “And now, will you excuse me? I mustn’t be late for work.”

  “All right. Be seeing you!”

  As I left he rejoined the admiring throng about the fellow who was telling Caruso stories. My way lay along the bright tiled hall, steamy and echoing with the clatter of food preparation and busy operatives; then through the dark security vestibule, with its luminous screens displaying the world without; then through the concealed door that shut behind me and left no trace of itself to any eyes but my own. I drew a deep breath. Chill and silent morning air; no glimmer of light, yet, at least not down here in the alley. Half-past-five. This time three days hence –